Home Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pause… Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Stafford Afternoons’ I try to imagine it differently, coming back to this town, its streets the same except for shops unemptied, a book store not bought out by Waterstones, or the Ancient High House not leaning forwards, its bulging Elizabethan plaster and timberwork. But as the train shuttles down the West Coast mainline and I shift my head to gaze into the gloaming outside – a paperback of Acrimony on the table to pass the time; the girl opposite eyeing it with suspicion or interest – I’m woken by the town’s lit-up landmark; that castle built from wood, then stone, then again and again until it was left in the ruins that remain and its stock of earthworks. The station’s empty in pools of orange light. This , I think to myself, won’t be the last time I wander bleary-eyed past the silence of the Bird in Hand, a bunch of kids skittering their BMXs round McDonalds or the small miracle
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